OBESIDAD INFANTIL, COMPLICACIONES METABOLICAS Y RIESGO CARDIOVASCULAR Y PREVENCION; NUTRICION EN ENFERMEDADES CRONICAS INFANTILES; DISLIPIDEMIAS EN LA NIÑEZ; PREVENCION CARDIOVASCULAR PEDIATRICA; ORIGEN FETAL DEL SINDROME METABOLICO; ESTUDIO DE LA ARTERIOSCLEROSIS SUBCLINICA EN LA EDAD PEDIATRICA; Nutrición y salud materno-infantil; Mecanismos moleculares de programación intrauterina; Rol fisiopatológico del estrés celular en ginecología y obstetricia; relación entre alimentación y enfermedades cardiovasculares; origen temprano de las enfermedades cronicas; Salud Pública; Ciencias Comunitarias; Prevención de VIH y Sida, Salud de la Mujer; Salud pública y nutrición materno-infantil; Origen temprano de las enfermedades crónicas; Crecimiento fetal: estudios peso al nacer y mortal.; Modelamiento de epidemias: VIH-SIDA, otras enfermedades.; Modelo de efectos mixtos y análisis de conglomerados; Minería de datos

Names of my last two Magister students with thesis directed by me: Drs. Paz Pacheco and Carolina Giadach

In the last three years, I have been actively investigating the obesity epidemics and proposing means to prevent it. My FONDECYT regular project 2009-2013 has provided me with an important diagnosis of the school-age children belonging to Puente Alto County, with the biggest county population in Chile. Diagnosis of obesity and overweight has been done for the first time in a controlled manner with trained personnel in this universe of children with mean age 11 years. In addition, we studied other aspects of this population: a) metabolic syndrome components; b) insulin resistance; c) carotid intima-media thickness; c) the Arginine-NO via in blood cells; e) and the early origins of obesity and other metabolic syndrome components, looking at the associations with prenatal and postnatal growth; we are using the conditional method to assess the influence of postnatal weight and height gain. Regarding the last aspect, I have been actively involved in a society that studies the obesity and chronic diseases epidemics called DOHaD society (Developmental origins of Health and Disease; www.dohadsoc.org), belonging to its directive council since 2006. I was the president of the International DOHaD congress of 2009 in Santiago, Chile, and I am now organizing, as chairman, the Ibero-American chapter of the DOHaD Society.
I have been invited to deliver lectures in Peru, Uruguay, Colombia, Argentina, USA and Spain, during different meetings. I wrote a book published in 2009 on those means from the public health point of view. I have also written different papers since 2008 in the international literature reporting results of my research, including several book chapters. Most of my publications have considered the idea of improving exercise activities in a better urban environment. One of the means to prevent obesity that I began to sustain in a publication of year 1983 has been the 6 months post-natal leave for working women that has reached a national consensus in 2012. The expected increase in breast-feeding duration should play a preventive role.